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About the Author

Fiona Collins grew up in an Essex village and after stints in Hong Kong and London returned to the Essex countryside where she lives with her husband and three children. She has a degree in Film and Literature and has had many former careers including TV presenting in Hong Kong, traffic and weather presenter for BBC local radio and film/TV extra. Her first novel, You, Me and the Movies, is also published by Corgi.

You can find her on Twitter @FionaJaneBooks.

Also by Fiona Collins

YOU, ME AND THE MOVIES

and published by Corgi

Dedication

To my lovely Dad

CHAPTER 1

Summer 2018

‘Did you see it?’

A woman in the recognizable navy and red polyester uniform of a London Underground worker is staring at me. She is so close to my face I can see myself reflected in her tortoiseshell glasses. I look slightly confused; she looks concerned. I press my overheated body against warm, pale green tiles, away from her searching eyes.

I’m leaning against the wall inside Warren Street station. A busker is in full flow at the bottom of the escalator to my right, strumming on a guitar and murdering ‘Streets of London’. My sister Angela used to love that song but it never had me convinced – it’s a lovely thought, it really is, but I doubt someone’s troubles can really be erased by traipsing the capital’s streets, hand in hand with some earnest do-gooder, gawping at the homeless … Anyway, this bloke’s really going for it; people are chucking coins and the odd note into his guitar case – perhaps they’re hoping if they give him enough, he’ll call it quits, pack up his guitar and go. I know if my dad were here, he’d happily sacrifice another sense to not have to listen to it.

‘Have you just come from Platform One, Northbound?’ asks the London Underground worker with the tortoiseshell glasses. ‘Are you OK? Do you need to sit down?’

It’s really hot. We’re a couple of weeks into a God-knows-how-long London heatwave. I came over a little peculiar further down the tunnel and am catching my breath before I tackle the escalator and the crowds again, but I don’t think I need to sit down. I’m not that old, am I? I know I’m not far off fifty, but does she think I’m about to keel over?

I look at her and she looks at me. Her face is kind. My face, in her glasses, and under its thick layer of foundation, is a bumpy and sweaty moonscape.

‘No, thank you,’ I say, in the clipped tones of a woman in a 1950s public service announcement. ‘I’m perfectly all right.’